FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails
reuters.com
reuters.com
It really feels like we're marching towards a brave new world. They can pry my copy of Applied Cryptography from my cold dead hands.
I own many unregistered firearms. Fortunately, that is likely to remain legal for some time.
[0]https://static.ijr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/guns4.jpg
The Malheur occupiers carried out an armed takeover of a Federal building in the middle of nowhere. No economic threat, no political threat, so they were basically surrounded and left alone. The Standing Rock occupiers are not armed and are standing in the way of money, so they get the water cannon and worse treatment.
If there was a time for terrorism to be used as a pretext, it was much closer to 9/11. Similarly for mass shootings. Most of the public accept them as routine and children are drilled about the possibility at school. That isn't enough to make even minor gun restrictions happen. Obviously nothing is going to happen under a Republican government, especially a Trump presidency. "Soon enough" isn't this decade.
(The only thing which could provoke serious disarmament efforts would be an armed Black Lives Matter movement..)
I hope more Republicans will appreciate that as the younger generation comes to power.
You'll be allowed to keep them and feel good about it as a consolation prize. But when you're unemployed and lack health insurance, what good will that do you? Republicans will use gun ownership as the wedge issue while they loot the government.
Guns aren't quite as effective as they were in the times of the founding fathers, now that the government has RPGs and tanks and fighter jets, etc.
It's not a feeling, it's a cold fact.
My only problem is thiefs might take a liking to the site, and I can't stop that.
Anyways, I don't like being photographed for buying a bolt at Home Depot. I don't see it stoping until people say--no, but it seems like people don't care, or feel helpless?
Personally, I have never liked being photographed, or tracked. I don't think it's o.k. for anyone to bring out the video camera out after a few beers anymore. In my world, those innocent days are gone. I automatically think, "where will those pictures end up?"
I have given up being tracked online.
To help people avoid surveillance, you'd need a map of cameras including field of view and expected effective recognition distance. Even then, I'm guessing most public spaces would simply turn out to be no-go zones for anyone not wishing to have their picture taken.
Oh, plus the warm fuzzies you get.
To nitpick, it rather feels like we are being marched.
we tried to warn you
Surveillance, secret courts, gag orders, harassment of activists and whisteblowers, no fly lists, militarization of the police, infiltration of dissenters and protest, and dubious relationships with terrorist sponsoring states show things are in a sinister and precarious state.
Our media and human right orgs so quick to turn the spotlight on others remain strangely reticent when it comes to self reflection. There is no frenzy and hysteria and no one is raising the bogey of totalitarianism and campaigning for sanctions.
Our media won't do its job and our instinctive rush to the moral high ground has lulled us in a sense of complacency.
But our moral highground and soft power built over generations is now toast. Every single bit of posturing about human rights by western media, NGOs and government will be met with derision and mockery. It is propaganda.
The use of surveillance both in the private and public sector is a 'gift' from our 'freedom loving' technologists. Ignore these naysayers and colloboraters, often found here. They have posed about freedom and liberty for decades only to suck up to authoritarianism given the slightest opportunity. The only thing they can do now is deny it, diminish it or wave it away making HN the single worst place to have a discussion on privacy and surveillance.
There's nothing wrong with being against this, but this seems like a huge stretch of the words "new" and "hacking" to the point of absurdity.
They are already allowed to remotely access this information based on the case that fired this off - the issue wasn't with their methodology but who issued the warrant. The entirety of what this rule changes is it defines special circumstances where it is appropriate for the judges in a district of a victim instead of the perpetrator to issue a warrant to do things that are already allowed.
> Under the proposed amendment, however, investigators could not obtain a search warrant merely because a user's location is concealed through technological means.
> The proposed amendment does not alter that rule, but instead provides an alternative means of satisfying Rule 41's venue provisions.
The rule clearly does not change anything about what is required to get a warrant, and concealment does not lower the bar for getting a warrant. The only thing that changes under this rule is it lays out scenarios where you would not be able to suppress evidence due to improper venue just because the warrant wasn't issued in the district you performed the crime from but instead where the crime actually occurred.
I'm not dismissing the concerns of all of those writing about this - just based on the comments and scenarios being laid out in them I think technically knowledgeable people are assuming the words "new" and "hacking" are being used correctly here without even looking into what has actually changed.
This also means people are completely unaware of what the government is already allowed to do apparently.
If everyone here got their way and this was magically blocked right now, absolutely nothing would change about what the FBI is allowed to do - only what evidence could be challenged if they ask judge A when they should have asked judge B (and can show they couldn't figure out that they were supposed to ask judge B (that's where the technological concealment comes in)).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Haramain_Foundation#Al-Hara...
That's complete and utter nonsense. The Snooper's Charter grants the UK government many new powers, and places obligations and restrictions on ISPs. It makes substantial substantive changes to the requirements for law enforcement to justify snooping and spying in the UK.
The Rule 41 change only applies to warrants seeking to access electronic documents, and makes no changes to what evidence must be presented to justify a warrant. It just changes, in two specific situations, where that evidence can be presented.
These situations are:
1. If it cannot be determined where the computer containing the documents is located, and the location has been hidden by technological means, then the warrant can be issued by a judge in any district in which the crime being investigated may have taken place. Under the old rule, the warrant had to be issued by a judge in the district where the computer was located, and so if that location could not be determined then investigators were out of luck.
2. If the crime being investigated is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the damaged computer are in five or more districts, then the warrant can be issued in any district where the crime may have occurred. Under the old rule, it had to be issued in the district where the computer was located.
This is not even remotely like the Snooper's Charter.
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/09/13/is-the-nsa-keeping-...
Nope.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
here is a tip: you will need men with guns to get anywhere
The key change is to Rule 41(b), "Authority to Issue a Warrant". It contained a list of 5 circumstances under which a magistrate just can issue a warrant. A 6th is being added:
===={ begin quote
(6)
a magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district if:
(A) the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means; or
(B) in an investigation of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5), the media are protected computers that have been damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.
=====} end quote
There is also a change to 41(f)(1)(C), which concerns serving a warrant. The prior version read:
===={ begin quote
The officer executing the warrant must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken to the person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken or leave a copy of the warrant and receipt at the place where the officer took the property.
=====} end quote
The update adds another sentence to that:
===={ begin quote
For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize or copy electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant on the person whose property was searched or whose information was seized or copied. Service may be accomplished by any means, including electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person.
=====} end quote
Remote access to a computer and they don't know where it is? This basically means a Tor hidden service or something like that?
Without doubt the concentration of computer science brilliance and investment is centred in the US, specifically in Silicon Valley. These kinds of restrictions on privacy and freedom upon those individuals will drive a kick back, investment and research into secure messaging and communication systems.
The encryption horse has already bolted, the proverbial stable door is wide open, and this could trigger the enabled and invested to bridle that horse for the good of mankind.
That's my hope anyway.
Again, technology alone is never the whole answer. The legal framework must be sane as well.
Who exactly are they quoting here, and is there a source? This is damning to trump if it's true, and damning to the authenticity of reuters if it's not.
Otherwise the headline nonsensical - hey the whole Senate tried to block but it didn't work?
As a result of the tacit support the courts and legislature have given the executive agencies in the past, the legislature is now required to affirmatively act to stop most executive actions.
There have been some proposals to require legislation to enact any large change in executive branch rules/policy/interpretations, but there is little support for such measures, as most people do not want to rule back the administrative state, they just want the state to do different things.
As a "data scientist" the most painful thing I have to deal with is data cleaning and data quality. Add to that the difficulty of actually getting into a (hopefully broad) array of VPN providers and tracking every person yelling into the pipe will make their (FBI/NSA) lives very very difficult, and this makes me happy on a rather visceral level.
Emphatically no.
This rule changes absolutely nothing about what is required to get a warrant, including the specificity of it (must identify a specific computer and/or person - that doesn't change at all, so how they identify TOR, VPN, etc users is already enough and has been challenged up through the supreme court). Simply using concealment does not lower the bar or change the requirements for getting the actual warrant.
The literal only thing that changes is if you are located in District 8 and commit a crime with a victim in district 4, if the FBI can show you are using technological means to hide your location - they may handle getting the exact same warrant they are already allowed to get with the same amount of evidence in the victims district instead of having to find yours.
In the past, if you were concealing your location in a way that they filed in District 5, that evidence would have been subject to challenge due to improper venue. They are now saying that where the crime actually occurred is a valid place to get a warrant if they can also show you are using technological means to hide your location. Concealing your location isn't a crime and doesn't demonstrate that a search of a computer would uncover evidence of a crime (it's actually right there in Rule 41 (c)).
It explicitly doesn't change what methods they are allowed to use - so everything they can do after this change, they were already allowed to do.
This is a procedural change the Surpeme Court already voted in favor of. The title is clickbait from what I can tell. I'm much more concerned with recent erosion of the right to remain silent.
Hacking powers are not being expanded. A loophole that has stymied investigations had been closed.
Now what we do need is reasonable limits on the scope of allowable warrants to prevent dragnets. The more interesting question is whether the FBI should be allowed to use drive-by malware to infect all visitors of a site, and if so under which very well defined circumstances?
What TFA missed is the reason we are worried about this rule change is that it could make dragnets easier to get seemingly valid warrants for. E.g. Even if Hidden Services are not being used, investigator claims it's not 'reasonable' to get warrants for each IP accessing a site and so just infects all visitors with malware to scan the hard drive and local network for some evidence.
But that needs to be illegal for more than just the reason of not knowing what jurisdiction to get the warrant in.
The constitution is the supreme law of the land, created to protect, not establish, natural rights. As such, such general warrants do not properly satisfy the constitutional requirements our country established.
Actions like this, are the result of the allowed slippage, from both sides of the isle, as prescribed to them by the shadow masters.
We have allowed our true foreign enemies to infiltrate and subvert our system, falsely focus our efforts on foreign boogeymen, all the while our domestic enemies run rampant (often backed, or blackmailed, by foreign ones).
The true, the capable, the already somewhat successful enemies of the constitution don't wear hijabs, they wear business suits and ties.
This is a turning point for America, where we either cower in fear of the coming totalitarian surveillance dystopia, or we speak up and push back. Silence now will be nothing less than acquiescence.
As Hitchens said, the American revolution is the only revolution that still stands a chance.
"I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other as this Writ of Assistance is."
Or maybe they don't share your opinion about how important or meaningful it is.